Around the House,  Childhood,  Family,  Fights,  Flashbacks,  Husbands,  Marriage Confessions,  Moving

The Bane of My Marital Existance

November 18, 2010 /

When I was about sixteen years old, I told my mom that I wanted one of those 1940’s vanities for my bedroom. You know the ones with the big mirrors and the dropped down center table top? The kind that you saw in all the old war movies that the soldier’s girlfriends had in their bedrooms with pictures of their boyfriends taped to the mirror? Do you know what I’m talking about? Sometimes they would stream scarves romatically across the top of the mirrors and I just thought they were the prettiest pieces of furniture ever.

My mother, being the economical, crafty person that she is, began to scour thrift stores in our town looking for one that she could restore for me. She found one for $50 in the backroom of a Salvation Army and she spent several months refinishing the wood, replacing the handles and knobs, and putting a new piece of mirror on the four five foot by five foot back. Then she found blue toile fabric that matched my bedroom and recovered the little stool.

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For years, this sat in my bedroom at home and when I went away to college, it went with me. I loved this vanity.

When I got married and we moved from Florida to Connecticut, Chris first began grumbling about the piece of sacred furniture. It was heavy. It was big. And in our tiny little apartment bedroom, it just wouldn’t fit. So, we decided to keep it at my parent’s house and then when we moved somewhere with more room, we’d get it back.

Several years later, we bought our house in Connecticut and – lo and behold! – I had TWO whole separate guest bedrooms! So, I began to bug Chris about getting my vanity back. And he began to grumble a little louder about the piece of sacred furniture. It was too heavy to move from Florida to Connecticut. It was old. It needed a lot of repairs. Yadda, yadda, yadda…

In the meantime, I should point out, Chris had bought an incredibly heavy SLATE pool table on eBay, gathered friends and driven across the state of Connecticut to pick it up and move it to our house, and then spent all this money and time recovering said pool table with new bumpers, new felt, and new wood railings.

And yet, my little vanity was too much of a project.

I began to bug him more. And more. And more. Until finally, he gave in and made arrangements with my Dad for the vanity to be moved up to Connecticut.

Sadly (and rather conveniently for Chris, might I add…) on the drive up from Florida, the five foot mirror that sits above the vanity was shattered. Which meant when my sacred vanity finally arrived, it was pushed into a closet somewhere and it never saw the light of day again. Just another home project that was never finished.

In the meantime, I should point out, Chris built himself an entire Man Cave, complete with a ping pong table that lifted on an elaborate pulley system into the ceiling and two small bars that he built himself for when his friends came over to drink beer in MY garage.

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When we decided to move back to Florida, we had a big yard sale to get rid of anything extra we had around the house that we didn’t want to have to haul across the county.

And that’s when Chris made his move. The bastard.

After months of saying the vanity was too heavy for him to move out of the closet where he had stored it, he suddenly had the strength of ten men as he began to slide the vanity into the yard sale pile.

“What are you DOING?!?!” I shrieked.

“It’s heavy. It’s broken. It’s expensive to repair. And we don’t have any need for this,” he said.

“But it’s a family HEIRLOOM!”

“It is not! It’s a piece of junk from a thrift store and we need to get rid of it.”

“But I need to pass it along to my children!” I insisted.

“Bean’s not going to want that junky thing,” Chris argued.

“But what if I have a girl? She might want it. And we might one day sit at it together on her wedding day, adjusting her veil and retouching her make up and….”

“FINE. Whatever,” Chris interrupted. “We’ll keep it for TWO YEARS, but if it has no use after that, then I’m getting rid of it.”

And THAT is reason #437 why I’m happy I’m having a girl.

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